Monday, October 20, 2014

Ives, 140

Ives on his 140th. Local and universal. Critical and Utopian. Ordered and spontaneous. Sentimental and experimental. Sacred and profane. Landscapes as self-portraits, theatres of deep memory. Taking the freedom offered by isolation to compose the impossible. How can a musician best be a citizen?

Also this: the oft-noted parallel between the landscapes of Mahler and Ives is real, out of the same musical-historical impulse, but in Mahler (as in the figures-in-clearings of Beethoven and Berlioz before), we're immobile, sitting in one place listening to the world pass by, and only in Ives do we listeners move through the landscapes as well, especially in the second movement of the 4th Symphony and throughout the Second Orchestral Set. This is a whole 'nother quality of engagement and the implications are still open.

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